HOW AND WHY THE STATE SHOULD FOLLOW THE CHURCH

Pastor Art Watkins of Coden Bible Church (Coden, Alabama)

July 5, 2016

Our money says, in God we trust. Our pledge of allegiance says, we are one nation under God. Our constitution says, God created us and that God gave us the rights we have. If we really believe we are under God and if God created us and gave us our rights and if we trust in God like our money says, then surely we should take his advice and counsel when it comes to running the government and making decisions and laws that affect millions of people. His advice and counsel is in the Bible and the founding fathers said we should follow what the Bible says when it comes to running our government. Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), signer of the Declaration of Independence and a founder of the Philadelphia Bible Society said: By renouncing the Bible, philosophers err from their moorings upon all moral subjects. ... It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published. The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible. The Bible contains more knowledge necessary to man in his present state than any other book in the world.

Some will object and say, the Bible is written to the church, but what is good for the church is just as good for the state. The founding fathers thought so. Noah Webster (1758-1843) who was a judge, legislator, educator, and author of the American Dictionary of the English Language said: The moral principles and precepts found in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. ... All the ... evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible. Our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion. The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society--the best book for regulating the temporal concerns of men.

----Consider The Following Issues----

****God advised Christians in the church to owe no man anything and stay out of debt. Isn’t that good advice to the state which is now nearly 80 trillion dollars in real debt? We are so far in debt that our country borrows roughly $6 billion every day and $239 million every hour. Put another way, that's $4 million every minute to pay off the debt. This year, for every dollar in revenue the federal government brought in, it spent two dollars and six cents. Debt has destroyed as many nations as war.

****God commanded the church not to support a man who will not work. Shouldn’t the state follow the same advice and quit dishing out billions of dollars to free loaders who will not work? Today, there are 110,489,000 people on welfare and the government spends $131,900,000,000 yearly on welfare. (35% of Americans receive welfare) There are 41,170,732 Americans who receive food stamps and it costs $69,800,000,000 per year. Each year, approximately 143 million federal income tax returns are filed in the United States. Of these, about 58 million have no tax liability after taking deductions and credits, leaving roughly 85 million people to shoulder the nation's entire federal income tax burden. It is these 85 million people who fund the $746 billion federal portion of the nation's total welfare spending. On average, each of them spends $8,776 to keep federal welfare programs afloat. As of January 2009, only four of the 80+ federal welfare programs in existence had work requirements for their recipients; the Obama Administration subsequently suspended those requirements in two of the four programs!

****God commanded Christians to live peaceably with ALL men, even bad men. Shouldn’t the state do the same with bad rulers and nations instead of sending our young men to fight and die in these illegal, immoral wars against nations who are no threat to us such as; Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc? We now have soldiers in 80 nations!

****God commanded the church to keep the law of God and serve it like the apostle Paul. If the state did the same wouldn’t this erase all the unjust laws and even perverted laws it has enacted? The founding fathers thought so. James McHenry (1753-1816), signer of the U.S. Constitution, founder and president of the Baltimore Bible Society said that the Old and New Testaments taken together contain a perfect law for our government and propose the most powerful persuasions to obey this law.

****God instructed Christians to bring their children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We are told to make God the center of our child’s education, for he is the God of true science, biology, mathematics, language, speech, geography, history, music art etc. Shouldn’t government schools do the same? The founding fathers thought so. Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), signer of the Declaration of Independence, a founder of the Philadelphia Bible Society said: “The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible. Fisher Ames (1758-1808), judge, representative to the Federal Congress, author of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution said: We are spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text in our schools. Children in America today will spend 12 years in school without hearing the name of God mentioned in the classroom by modern school teachers for God has been expelled from the class room and the text books.  Martin Luther the German preacher said: I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.

****God told Christians to obey the government that punishes the evil and rewards the good. (Romans 13) Shouldn’t our government punish criminals and reward the good instead of punishing the good and rewarding criminals and perverts? Criminals in America are given a slap on the hand and they walk out of the courtroom laughing at the judge and the law. Last week a man killed his wife in Alabama who had been arrested 49 times!

The good are not rewarded, they are being arrested. Who would have imagined that Americans would be arrested for refusing to bake a cake for a couple of sodomites? Or selling lemonade in their front yard; Or refusing to hire sodomites; Or refusing to marry sodomites; or demonstrating at abortion clinics; Or home schooling their kids; Or refusing to sell or rent a home to a bad person or a sodomite or people shacking up; Or preaching on the streets; Or wearing a shirt with a Christian message to school; Or passing out tracts on the side walk; Or teaching the Bible in school; Or leading prayer in school; Or witnessing at school; Or living independent of the power grid; Or feeding crows; Or filming the police; Or catching a fish 1 inch or one ounce too large; Or feeding poor people; Or carrying large sums of money; Or holding Bible classes in their home or back yard; Or growing vegetables in their yard: Or collecting rain water? I did not make these up; they happen every day in America.

Noah Webster said; All the evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible. He is right and we would have more freedom, prosperity, safety, godliness, peace and order if the state simply followed God’s advice and instructions to the church in the Bible as many of the founding fathers believed.